Alyx woke unreasonably fresh and rested for having slept on the ground without a bedroll or even a travel cloak. Just another oddity she was going to chalk up to the strange woman sitting with a cat in her lap beside the fire.

It must be some sort of skill. A passive around rest? Maybe camping? Or fire. That was the only explanation for why this woman was obsessed with lighting campfires wherever they went.

Alyx blinked, staring at Cass and the cat for another minute.

Where had the cat come from?

She groaned and shook her head. Not a single thing about Cass made any sense, why should spontaneous pets surprise her?

Cass looked up from the cat to Alyx. She smiled that naive, relieved smile that seemed perpetually plastered over her lips and gestured to the black and purple tabby. “Please allow I to introduce to Salos.”

Alyx looked between Cass and the cat, processing the broken Jothi with ever-growing confusion.

There had been a time, for a while after they’d first met, Cass had been speaking Jothi with perfect grammar (if questionable and highly accented pronunciation) and a reasonably wide vocabulary. But at some point along the way her speech had regressed to these mangled sentences and wild gestures.

It was improving again, but there was no way to know how much the other woman understood.

What kind of skill or artifact with such inconsistent effect she might be using, Alyx had no idea.

No, the real confusion was what her eyes and Identify were telling her. It looked like a shadow tabby. Identify marked it as a shadow tabby. But she needed to ask anyway, “What is that?”

“Shadow tabby?” Cass asked, her head cocking to the side with that frustratingly naive innocence that Alyx had come to expect from her.

Alyx put a hand to the bridge of her nose. How to explain that was impossible? No, not impossible. Clearly, there was one in front of her. Clearly, this stranger had pulled one from somewhere.

“Really?” Alyx asked anyway. She decided to set aside the fact shadow tabbies were a rare and expensive breed of pet kept only by the wealthy and move directly to the primary issue. “Where did it come from?”

Cass opened her mouth to say something. She was interrupted by the cat, which trilled in something that almost sounded like a language and almost sounded like the kind of noise a cat might make, if one weren’t particularly familiar with cats.

Cass said something to the cat in that language of hers. The cat chirped back. This continued for a good minute before Cass turned back to Alyx.

Sheepishly, the woman said, “He is I familiar.”

A familiar. Then she was a summoner? That was impossible. Another impossibility to add to the growing pile.

No. Wait. There was a simpler answer. This was a language issue. She couldn’t have meant ‘familiar’ as in the summoned monster or spirit contractually obligated to aid the summoner. That kind of thing was the domain of the Gods. Only the God-touched could do something like that, and even then it was an unheard-off boon.

Alyx scrambled for anything remotely similar. “You mean, he’s your animal companion?”

An animal companion would make much more sense. Well. More sense anyway.

She’d never heard of shadow tabbies being native to Uvana, but maybe they were? There were a lot of unexplored corners of this valley. Alternatively, it wasn’t entirely impossible that a past challenger with one had died leaving the creature behind. It wasn’t a probable story, but it was technically possible.

Cass’s eyes narrowed, a thoughtful frown puckering her lips. The cat in question chirped something and Cass nodded her head. “He is I—” the cat chirped again and Cass corrected herself, “my partner.”

That answered literally none of her questions. Was he a familiar or an animal companion? Where had he come from?

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

But, like many things, it was probably better to just drop it. It wasn’t her problem. They just had to defeat the Herald of the Pass and leave.

“Alright, let's get going,” Alyx said and started walking. As always, Cass scurried behind her, though this time whispering to her chittering cat as she walked.

Once again, the good sense in the back of her mind whispered that they should just get out as fast as possible. They were not a balanced party. They had no business taking on any Lords or Heralds. They shouldn’t have succeeded in killing the Lord of the Deep as it was.

But there were only three ways into or out of the West Forest where they currently found themselves.

1. The Main Pass, guarded by the Lord of the Pass, an enormous boar, large enough to shake mountains as it moved.

2. The Skyline Ascent, patrolled by the Herald of the Pass, a great bird that was known for swooping travelers off the peaks.

3. The Hidden Path, a narrow and rugged path filled to bursting with untold monsters of all description.

One was the “intended” path, such as there was one. Taking out the Lord of the Pass was the primary goal of most trial takers. Most teams were put together to counter or corral the beast. Collecting the Blessing from defeating it was a mark of pride outside the trial. Had she had more time, this would have been her goal as well.

Her team hadn’t been well equipped to fight such a large monster though. Not with its impenetrable iron hide. Instead, they’d opted to push further to raise her all the way to level 27 and get a Blessing that way.

They’d taken the hidden path and had suffered for it. They’d made it two-thirds of the way through according to the guide, when they’d been ambushed by the grotto spiders. She pushed the memory aside. All her hired teammates had died or run off. If they were lucky they escaped back to the entrance. If they were less lucky, they’d gotten captured by another spider.

Without a scout, it wasn’t wise to try that path again.

That only left the Skyline Ascent. It was longer, but there shouldn’t be as many monsters besides the herald. If they were careful, keeping to cover overhead they could probably pass without being seen if it was just the two of them—three of them if she counted the cat. Should she count the cat?

As for killing it?

That was out of the question. However, it was a herald, which meant killing it wasn’t required. There was a game they could play that she had some confidence they could win: Hide and Seek. It was a simple enough set of rules. Be seen once by the enemy then successfully hide again for a certain amount of time. With just the two of them, it should be doable.

And once defeated, heralds left their victor alone for the remainder of the trial. No additional games could be played. They wouldn’t attack again either unless threatened.

With their skills, it should be possible…

She eyed Cass again, as they walked.

What exactly was her skill set? She’d killed a Grotto Spider almost double her level solo. Not a small feat by any stretch. From the remains of the spider, it appeared to have been done with that wind glaive she carried.

Taken together, that strongly suggested she was a spellsword: a highly variable class, with specialties as wide-ranging as Strength to Alacrity to Perception. A common jack of all trades master of none.

But she had also displayed incredible magic casually and repeatedly. Hell, just setting up the camping site last night the woman had magicked up a ring for the fire pit rather than scrounging up a set of reasonable rocks.

Why had she even bothered?

The stools alone had been a luxury, but she then also created plates and cups. Why?

And she had domain over more than just stone.

She’d manifested fire in her hand to start the campfire.

She’d manifested water and drank like it was normal.

And all that was ignoring the wind blades she regularly summoned in combat.

So, what, was she a mage? No one else could have the Focus needed to perform all this magic with the ease she seemed to. Not to mention only a mage would dedicate as many skills to manipulating so many disparate domains.

But mages didn’t fight like she did. They kept to the back if they came out to the field at all. A mage willingly coming somewhere like the Beginner Trial? Willingly coming alone?

And she did seem to have come alone. If she was to be believed she had no team and no plan. She barely even seemed to know where they were.

That had to be translation difficulties though. You didn’t just accidentally end up in a Trial. Certainly not this trial.

However, that only opened additional questions. How had she gotten here without a pass from a city official or castle lord? The Trial wasn’t something just anyone could enter.

Alyx had barely gotten a pass in and her grandmother was the Grand Duchess!

A loud rustle from the trees ahead stopped her in her tracks. Cass ran into her, she stopped so suddenly.

“What’s—“ Cass started to ask, but Alyx cut her off with a hissing shush. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Her heart hammered in her chest as she held her breath.

Maybe it hadn’t seen them.

Then she saw the eyes. Electric blue and filled with malice. Staring straight at them.

Lightning-phased Lion (Herald of the Forest)

Lvl 26

[A powerful predator as much made of lightning as flesh. It is both strong and fast. There is but one creature stronger than this Herald within the Western Forest and that is its Lord.]